February 2026 (part one)

Every month I'm making a new playlist and adding a variety of cool new songs and cool old songs I listened to and then once every week or two I log onto my website and write 2-4 sentences about those songs. That's the Horse Combinations promise, baby! Here's what we've come up with so far for the February 2026 playlist, streaming exclusively on Tidal!

Barry Walker Jr. - “Peridot, Call Me”
Portland-based paleontologist Barry Walker Jr. moonlights as a pedal steel player with groups like Rose City Band, North Americans, and Mouth Painter. He’s also released a handful of really solid recordings under his own name, most recently January’s excellent Paleo Sol, a collection of earthy instrumental tracks that manage to stand out from the increasingly crowded ambient Americana scene.

Gia Margaret - “Everyone Around Me Dancing”
Gia Margaret’s Romantic Piano is one of my favorite albums of the decade. It’s a record I played endlessly after it's summer 2023 release and is something I revisit frequently when in need of a half hour or so of peace. Album opener “Hinoki Wood” has taken on a life of its own over the last few years as a sound on TikTok, used mostly as an easy aesthetic shorthand for all things carefully curated and self-consciously cozy. Being a middle aged indie rock fan, I’m used to latecomers embracing music I love in new, weird contexts, it’s fine, but when I’m scrolling Instagram reels and hear the first five seconds of a song that introduces a record that to me represents sort of the sort of peace and stillness that is in direct opposition to looking at my phone, it still feels a little uncanny. It’s the same irked feeling I get when I hear "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" or “Maps” in Walgreens, like this is too meaningful of art for me to be hearing while I’m just in here for a minute trying to buy chips. Anyways there’s a new Gia Margaret album coming and this is the first single from it and I think it’s really good.

Beat Happening - “Teenage Caveman”
Speaking of Instagram reels, I was on there the other day and saw a clip of Beat Happening playing live outside in the middle of the day in 1992. Things obviously weren’t perfect back then but they do seem cooler in a lot of ways.

KMRU - “They Are Here”
The new KMRU record, Kin, is in a lot of ways exactly what I’m looking for from ambient music, a sort of slow-motion, all-encompassing wall of sound that shuts out the noise of the world. A sort of spiritual successor 2020's landmark LP Peel, his last record for the legendary experimental Editions Mego, Kin is a dense, overwhelming listen that I expect to spend a lot of time with this year.



Railcard - “Cherry Plum”
I’ve been listening to the newly issued assemblage of three EPs from London-based twee supergroup Railcard a lot lately. The record’s full of effortless, immaculately constructed indie pop gems, my favorite of which (for now) is “Cherry Plum,” an efficient convergence of strings, wistful vocals, and a perfectly simple guitar lead.



The Necessaries - “More Real”
I was checking out the new compilation of songs from The Necessaries, a power pop band from the early 1980s featuring members of The Modern Lovers, Red Krayola, and, most notably, a young Arthur Russell, and mostly having a good time with it. Unsurprisingly the handful of tracks with Russell on lead vocals are the ones that really grabbed me, specifically “More Real,” which would fit in perfectly on collections like Love Is Overtaking Me or Calling Out of Context.

Visible Cloaks - “Disque (ft. Motion Graphics)”
It’s been almost 10 years since Reassemblage and still nobody’s doing it quite like Visible Cloaks. Welcome back, fellas!



Should - “Spangle”
"Spangle" is an unbelievable banger nestled a quarter of the way into Numero Group’s new reissue of Should’s 1998 debut LP Feed Like Fishes. There’s a lot to love across their catalogue but this might be their most immediately satisfying track. Listen to those background vocals!

Molina - “Golden Brown Sugar”
Copenhagen-based songwriter and occasional ML Buch collaborator Molina is back with her first new track since October 2024’s underrated LP When you wake up. No word on if this is the first taste of a new record or just a one-off single but I’ll take as much of it as you’ve got!

We'll be back soon with more, for now check out the still-in-progress February 2026 playlist embedded below for a look at what lies ahead, blurbwise!